Know Your Aerobic Training Zones

Know Your Aerobic Training Zones

VO2 Max, Steady, Threshold….what does it all mean? Knowing your individual aerobic training zones is crucial to ensuring you maximise the adaptations you can achieve from each planned workout or training run as well as reducing your risk of burnout or injury.

What

Have you heard runners talk about the Tempo run they did today, or the VO2 Max session they did on Tuesday? In simple terms, different aerobic training zones will stimulate your body in different ways to achieve different adaptations. Whilst training at a variety of different training zones is encouraged for all runners, depending on your specific running goals, different training zones should be targeted to enhance the adaptations that are specific to your running training and racing goals.

The Details

Your 5 aerobic zones can be used to prescribe workouts that will best stress the cardio-vascular (CV) and muscular (M) systems to the desired degree. Below is a summary of all 5 aerobic training zones and their main purpose:

This is a pace where the body burns all of the available oxygen (O2) to fuel the aerobic system. It is important to remember that runners can go quicker than this pace, BUT if they do, it is due to anaerobic contribution.

An acidic environment is created in the blood and working muscles due to accumulation of hydrogen ions (H+), making the pace sustainable for short periods of time only.

Fatigue is caused by CV and anaerobic (H+) sources due to an unsustainable demand of O2

Longer efforts (typically >5min with steady float recovery) or a continuous run less than 30min total.

This is a pace where the body is using ALMOST all of the available O2 to fuel the aerobic system, meaning there is O2 available to buffer the acidic H+ that are being produced in the working muscles. H+ will therefore be present in the blood and working muscles but importantly, they do not accumulate.

This zone is often called the “red line” as any increase in pace above threshold will result in H+ accumulation and therefore the pace may not be sustainable for the planned time period of the session.

To work out YOUR aerobic pace zones, check out our Pace Calculator HERE

To learn more about how to apply these aerobic training zones towards your running goals in the most effective way, our specialist coaching team are here to help! Contact us coach@frontrunnersports.com.au.